Balance Patch Notes

By Ivko, from Dream Reactor

Welcome to the biggest balance patch we've had for quite a while.

A certain number of cards have been on our radar for some time. The reason why we continued to keep things without changes was that while some cards were overpowered, the game balance was in a fine spot overall. There were a lot of good decks to play, maybe around 20, which is unheard of in any card game. We didn't want to put the metagame into chaos, and potentially risk ending up in a worse spot.

With the first Ancients Rising all that changed. Inevitably some of the new cards fit well into existing and strong deck archetypes, and things get out of hand quickly. Currently the top decks are sharply shifting anyway, so we will use this opportunity to bring a lot of cards in check. These are all cards that have been problematic for a long time, and will continue creating problems in the future.

Of course we couldn't help but notice that the new Ytix hero seems to be very powerful, and a couple of the other newly released cards might also require attention. However, we can't make changes to these cards that soon after the release. We will handle any balance issues with the new cards after the Masters Final on June 2nd, when we have more insight into the situation.

Please note that with this patch we want to leave all affected cards in the "playable" territory, but in some cases this is too difficult to achieve. We always strive to make as many cards in the game competitively playable as possible, and there will likely be a "buff" patch in the following month too, although we can't confirm the timing of it yet.

Trigon of the Pact - leveling up with this shrine now costs 1 mana.

Trigon has enabled all kinds of weird aggro decks where players easily splash multiple aspects into a Rage base. With its help the most powerful cards from the aspects of Good are played basically in every deck that needs them without penalty, which is simply too powerful and likely to cause problems in the future.

Adding a cost to leveling up with Trigon is a logical way to reduce the tempo the dual levels provide, and in turn reduce the power level of the currently dominating aggressive decks.

Another must-include card for aggressive decks, this card can enable you to make good trades and/or draw cards in a single turn for too little of a cost. We'd like Timea to remain playable, and we believe that drawing two cards for basically no cost is the main problem with the card, so we are reducing the Valor value while keeping the end stats the same.

This will also allow you to play Timea as a 3/4 creature on an empty board.

Molten Passageway - now requires 2 Rage levels.

Recently you the players showed us how powerful Molten Passageway could be in a deck designed to recycle the creatures from by sacrificing and reanimating them. This is a nice trick that however quickly starts to feel unfair and repetitive. No one wants to face 8+ Bezarok in a game, so we are trying to address this particular combination without totally killing the card.

Harbinger of Sorrow - stats decreased to 2 ATK / 3 HP and the number of Enchained Souls to summon is rounded down

Harbinger of Sorrow is so powerful that nearly all Corruption decks want to play it despite the life loss, which is more than negated by the Enchained Souls you get. We'd like to keep the one-man army option for this card, but only if you build your deck specifically around the card.

Haunt - now only summons 1 Enchained Soul

An endless stream of multiple Enchained Souls each turn becomes too much after a certain point, and even if Haunt is a very cool card to play with, it was time to end this madness. You could win entire games on the back of this 2 mana card, and that was certainly not an ideal situation.

Johrai's Silencer - cost increased to 5

We believe that this card is balanced, however it is exceedingly unpleasant to lose to it. We are trying to reduce the prevalence of Silencer in the competitive field by this change. A redesign of the card would probably be the ideal solution, but we are unable to do that in this update.

Celestial Blossom - cost increased to 1

With Protoprism and New Horizons around, this card enables too degenerate turns in Wisdom Artifact decks, basically securing a win on turn 3-4. This is simply not acceptable in a competitive game such as Spellweaver.

Aezerhis, the Burning Agony - added activation cost of 1 to the damage that is dealt when cards are decayed

Aezerhis makes possible some crazy turns where it can deal upwards of 15 damage in a single turn, no matter how well the opponent is prepared because of Swift. The 1 mana activation will make the card much fairer and less swingy, while hopefully still playable.

Cavalry Field Captain - the ability to retreat from combat was removed

This is a small change in a card that is good because of its first power - the +1/+1/+1 buff it provides.

The second power of CFC is simply too much and it is often overlooked because the first power dominates so much. Its function is also not apparent for new players, and CFC is in the starter decks, so we wanted to simplify the card, while also reducing its power level just a tiny bit.